I am a bit of a bagel snob, I will admit it. I was born in NJ and lived there for the first 4 years of my life. My parents and their parents and all their families were from NY. Even once we moved to MA we would still spend a ton of time in NY with the rest of the family. breakfast every morning was bagels with every topping you could imagine. All sorts of fishes and spreads and veggies.

Well the area I live in has a ton of transplanted New Yorkers. It seems that everyone from my parents generation who lived on Long Island got up and moved to out town in MA. My parents are still to this day bumping into people who moved here from either their town or a neighboring town.

Anyway enough about my history. Here is the point of my post. Tons of bagel shops have tried to make it here. The story is always the same. The owner moved here from NY and could not find a real NY bagel. Nothing he or she found lived up to their expectations, so they decided that they would open their own shop since they are from NY and know what a good bagel should taste like. It never works. There are some very good bagel shops, but none of them have captured the magic that is a NY bagel.

Here is where Ray's NY bagels comes in. Ray pretty much experienced the same thing as I just described. He could not find a good bagel outside of NY no matter who made it. Well he came up with a solution. He decided to make his bagels in NY and freeze them and ship them around the country. The catch is that he only cooks them 95% of the way. When you buy them you need to finish cooking them at home. All this entails is popping them in the toaster oven for 5 minutes.

Let me tell you I was VERY skeptical. How could a frozen bagel be any good? Well I broke down and tried them this week and boy was I impressed. I will take one of these frozen bagels over any fresh bagel from any bagels shop outside of NY/NJ that I have ever tried. The flavor is decent. Not full of flavor like a true good NY bagel, but not bad either. For flavor I would give it a 6 out of 10. Texture however is great. Crisp on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside. They are a bit smaller than a typical NY bagel, but that is not a bad thing. Some NY bagels can be way too big for some people. Do yourself a favor and try these if you get the chance. And no I do not work for the company

I tried Ray's and didn't think they were wonderful. My primary problem with them is the onions. I like onion bagels and when you bake Ray's the rest of the way, the onions burn. I suppose if I tried a plain bagel, the problemn would go away.

After trying Ray's (my last hope), that's when I decided to try to make my own. I'm going to put the onions on the inside.

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"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -Carl Sagan

Like you said, the water is the key. I read somewhere about someone who owned a bagel place in NY and then decided to move to California (I think). Once there he opened a bagel shop again. Well much to his disappointment it just was not the same. He did some research and some lab tests on the water and decided it was the mineral contents that was the key to a true NY bagel. If I remember correctly he tried to truck NY tap water to CA, but that did not last too long as it was too expensive. I might have some of my facts wrong from this story as it was a while ago that I read this, but you get the gist

I'll try the foil as well but now I want to make my own bagels. It's not all that complex. There's really just the extra step of boiling the dough before baking that makes it different from any other bread.

Thanks to you both.

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"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -Carl Sagan